## Arkansas Takes Bold Steps to Support Startups

Arkansas is on a mission to **expand resources** dedicated to nurturing and growing **startups** across all 75 counties. This initiative aims to create a **thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem** that supports innovation and economic development.

### Why This Matters
The state recognizes the critical role that startups play in driving **job creation** and fostering **economic growth**. By enhancing resources available to entrepreneurs, Arkansas is positioning itself as a favorable environment for new business ventures.

### What’s Being Done
Officials are calling on various organizations to **collaborate** in this effort, ensuring that startups receive the necessary support, guidance, and funding to flourish. This includes access to **mentorship programs**, **networking opportunities**, and financial assistance tailored for early-stage companies.

### The Vision for the Future
With these initiatives, Arkansas aims to not only boost the local economy but also to **attract talent** and **investment** from outside the state. The goal is to create a sustainable environment where startups can **innovate** and **grow**, benefiting the entire community.

Arkansas is expanding resources available to nurture and grow startups across all 75 counties.

Unlocking Growth: How Arkansas is Empowering Startups Across All Counties

## The Rise of Corporate Gifting
It’s now broadly accepted that **customers and employees** who receive **corporate gifts** appreciate the brand much more, and for not a lot of outlay. The market for this has exploded, with **Snappy**, a New York-based company that has raised over **$125 million**, acquiring **Covver**, a corporate merchandise gifting platform.

## Covver's Unique Offerings
Covver, backed by **TLV Partners** from Tel Aviv, has raised **$7 million** to date. It specializes in **swag-style merchandise** and offers **points-based recognition solutions** for employees, automatically personalizing products. For example, if someone wanted to send swag to the Editor-at-large, the system would automatically create swag with the job title on it, eliminating the need for graphic design.

## A Unified Gifting Experience
In an interview with TechCrunch, **Hani Goldstein**, Co-Founder and CEO of Snappy, stated that Covver’s expertise in swag and company store solutions complements Snappy’s gifting experience. The platforms will be unified, with Covver effectively becoming the **“swag channel”** on Snappy’s platform. Goldstein highlighted Covver's innovative use of **AI** to create personalized swag experiences.

## The Corporate Gifting Market
Goldstein noted, “There’s about **$50 billion** worth of gift cards in the US, and the corporate gifting market is worth around **$260 billion**.” Many people opt for gift cards due to indecision, making gifting feel transactional. Snappy aims to keep gifting easy, yet maintain the **magic and personalization** that makes gifts special.

## Covver's Future with Snappy
Roee Hemed, CEO of Covver, expressed excitement about the merger, stating, “By joining forces with Snappy, we’re unlocking new possibilities for our customers, including expanded product solutions.” Snappy has secured **over 47%** of Fortune 100 companies as clients, including **Microsoft, Amazon,** and **Comcast**.

## The Competitive Landscape
While Snappy is expanding, it faces competition from other players in the market. **Sendoso** has raised **$152.7 million**, **Postal** raised **$46 million**, and **&Open** from Dublin raised **$26 million** in 2022. Snappy’s acquisition of Covver positions it to lead the **corporate gifting** space with enhanced offerings and capabilities.

It’s now broadly accepted that customers and employees who receive corporate gifts end up appreciating the brand much more, and for not a lot of outlay.

Snappy Expands Its Empire: The Game-Changing Acquisition of Covver

AI companies globally raised over **$100 billion** in **venture capital** in 2024, marking an **80% increase** from 2023. This amount represents nearly a third of total VC investments this year.

The rapid growth of the **AI industry** has led to a crowded market filled with overlapping companies. Investors are challenged to identify **category-leading startups**. A recent survey by TechCrunch of **20 VCs** revealed that more than half believe the **quality or rarity of proprietary data** is what gives AI startups a competitive edge.

**Paul Drews** from Salesforce Ventures emphasized that having a moat is difficult due to the fast-paced industry changes. He looks for startups that combine **differentiated data**, **technical innovation**, and a **compelling user experience**.

**Jason Mendel** of Battery Ventures echoed this sentiment, stating that access to unique, proprietary data allows companies to provide superior products, while a strong workflow or user experience helps them become essential to their customers.

For companies developing vertical solutions, proprietary data is increasingly crucial. **Scott Beechuk** from Norwest Venture Partners noted that startups focusing on unique data have the highest long-term potential.

**Andrew Ferguson** from Databricks Ventures added that rich customer data enhances AI effectiveness and differentiation.

**Valeria Kogan**, CEO of Fermata, highlighted that their success stems from combining customer data and proprietary research data, ensuring model accuracy through in-house data labeling.

**Jonathan Lehr** from Work-Bench stressed that it’s not only the data but also the ability to clean and utilize it effectively that matters, particularly in vertical AI opportunities that require deep domain expertise.

Ultimately, VCs are also looking for **strong AI teams**, robust tech integrations, and a deep understanding of customer workflows.

In a market moving as quickly as AI, investors say that they aren't looking for companies with technology moats, but rather those with proprietary data.

Why Proprietary Data is the Key to Success for AI Startups in 2024

Welcome to **Startups Weekly** — your essential recap of the latest in the startup world! Want this in your inbox every Friday? **Sign up here**.

### Most Interesting Startup Stories from the Week

![May Mobility Tecnobus](https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1-Tecnobus_May_BlackVersion_TechDay202468.jpg?w=680)
*Image Credits: May Mobility*

The second week of the year has been bustling with startup news, and 2025 is no different. Notable launches at **CES 2025** include:
- **Full Nature Farms** unveiled a **smart irrigation system** to reduce agricultural water waste.
- **Soliddd** introduced **smart glasses for individuals with macular degeneration**.
- **May Mobility** showcased an **electric autonomous minibus**.

Other significant news includes:
- **NXP**, a Dutch semiconductor giant, announced plans to acquire **TTTech Auto** for **$625 million**, aiming to enhance safety software for autonomous vehicles.
- **H1**, a healthcare analytics platform, acquired **Ribbon**, a Y Combinator graduate that helps patients find doctors based on insurance.
- **Flock Safety** faces a lawsuit from a California mayor alleging wrongful termination.
- **Rooms**, a 3D design app, secured a **$1 million investment from Google** and access to **Gemini AI**.
- **Peterson Conway**, a defense tech recruiter, has a compelling profile worth reading.

### Most Interesting Fundraises This Week

![Whatnot Seller](https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Seller_Whatnot.png?w=680)
*Image Credits: Whatnot*

This week almost marked the first **pentacorn** of the year:
- **Whatnot**, a livestream shopping app, raised **$265 million**, pushing its valuation to nearly **$5 billion**.
- **Xocean**, an Irish startup, raised **$119 million** for marine robotics.
- **NomuPay** secured **$37 million** to enhance payment systems in underserved Asian markets.
- **OnPay**, based in Atlanta, raised over **$100 million** for payroll and HR solutions, including a **$63 million Series B** round.
- **Grand Games**, the Turkish gaming startup, raised **$30 million** for its projects.

### Most Interesting VC and Fund News This Week

![Defiant VC Firm](https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Defiant.jpg?w=680)
*Image Credits: Defiant*

- **Defiant**, a new European VC firm, aims to raise **$70 million** for its first fund focused on **B2B SaaS and fintech**.
- **Trucks Venture Capital** plans to make around **30 seed investments** from its new **$70 million fund**.
- **South Park Commons** is raising **$40 million** for an **India-specific fund**, despite mixed sentiments in the market.

### Last but Not Least

Recent reports indicate that **VC investment in emerging markets** dropped by over **40%** last year, while over half of global VC funding was funneled into **Silicon Valley**. As the AI boom continues, this trend is expected to persist in 2025.

Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here.

Unveiling January's Startup Buzz: Near-Pentacorns and Major Funding Highlights

## The Challenge in Renewable Energy Funding
The **U.S. renewable energy industry** finds itself at a crossroads. While **large-scale projects** like the **SunZia wind turbine project** enjoy easy funding from financial titans, smaller installations, such as rooftop solar panels, are becoming increasingly affordable. However, **mid-sized projects**—those valued under **$100 million**—struggle to secure financing, caught between the affordability of small projects and the interests of major investors.

## Enter Plural Energy
**Plural Energy**, a two-year-old **tokenization startup**, aims to bridge this gap. By enabling mid-sized renewable energy projects to raise funds through **on-chain investments**, Plural Energy seeks to democratize access to renewable energy investments and innovate financial products within the sector. According to co-founder **Adam Silver**, the current fundraising process for solar projects is unacceptable and needs a transformative approach to meet climate goals.

## Innovative Investment Products
Through Plural Energy, investors can access four types of products:
1. **Small-scale asset-backed instruments** (e.g., bundling 1,000 rooftop solar installations into a single tokenized security).
2. **Development-stage renewables**.
3. **Operating renewable projects** (like existing solar plants seeking additional funds).
4. **Unique projects** involving innovative technology, such as AI-driven batteries or bitcoin mining operations.

While most projects currently focus on **solar power**, Plural is also exploring wind and hydropower initiatives. To date, five projects worth **$40 million** have successfully raised funds through the platform, amidst a high demand for its services.

## Streamlined Fundraising Process
The fundraising timeline has significantly improved, reducing the process from **six months to six weeks**. Plural Energy’s model opens capital markets to a broader range of investors, ensuring transparency and efficiency in fundraising.

## Investment Mechanics
Once approved, issuers can select from various securities, including **common equity** and **convertible notes**. Each security is represented by a unique token, facilitating investment as low as **$500** for retail investors, while larger projects may require higher minimum investments. Plural operates as a **registered transfer agent**, maintaining ownership records and ensuring compliance with regulatory standards.

## Blockchain Innovations in Payments
By leveraging **blockchain technology**, Plural simplifies payment systems through smart contracts, automating dividend distributions and reducing administrative burdens. This innovation allows for real-time financial transactions, potentially enabling tokenized securities to be used in decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystems.

## Future Prospects
Looking ahead, Plural aims to enhance liquidity by allowing tokenized assets to trade on decentralized exchanges and possibly develop derivatives based on these securities. The vision is to create a seamless transition between cash and clean energy assets, making investments in renewable energy as straightforward as managing traditional bank accounts.

Plural Energy is already tokenizing renewable energy projects; it wants these assets to permeate through the crypto ecosystem.

Revolutionizing Renewable Energy Funding: How Plural Energy is Tokenizing Green Assets for All

**Donald Trump** stirred up a storm with his proposal to buy **Greenland**, but he’s not the only one with such ambitions. **Dryden Brown**, CEO of **Praxis**, a startup linked to the **Network State movement**, had previously attempted to purchase the territory for what some critics term **dystopian purposes**. 

### The Network State Movement
Brown's company is part of a controversial ideology that seeks to create **privately funded, crypto-friendly nations**. While supporters see this as a path to a **utopian future**, detractors label it as a form of **neo-colonialism**, aiming to exploit existing nations for their resources.

### Brown's Greenland Quest
In a surprising twist, Brown, who faced ridicule during his attempts to negotiate with Greenlandic officials, now seems to revel in Trump's proposal. His recent **tweets** suggest a strategic alignment with the **Trump administration**, indicating that Praxis wants to help **secure the Arctic** and extract valuable resources from Greenland.

### The Thiel Connection
Backing this controversial venture is the shadowy billionaire **Peter Thiel**, whose firm **Pronomos Capital** funds many projects within the Network State movement. Thiel’s associates are deeply embedded in both the tech world and Trump’s political sphere, raising questions about potential connections between their ambitions and Trump's proposal.

### Exploitation or Opportunity?
Brown's comments reflect a clear desire to exploit Greenland’s **natural resources**—including uranium, gold, and oil—while also using the territory as a testing ground for future **terraforming** projects aimed at colonizing Mars. This raises ethical concerns about the true intentions behind such ambitions.

In a world where tech billionaires dream of reshaping nations, the line between **innovation** and **colonialism** becomes dangerously thin.

A techno-colonialist project sees Greenland as the perfect opportunity to trial its utopian ambitions.

The Controversial Techno-Colonial Dream: Why A Startup Wants to Buy Greenland

Good morning, it’s finance editor Jeff John Roberts filling in for Allie. Like everyone here in Southern California, I’m watching in horror as out-of-control fires consume entire communities and force hundreds of thousands around Los Angeles to flee.

### The Costly Disaster
The ongoing calamity is shaping up to be **the most expensive natural disaster** in U.S. history. It is also an **economic disaster** as the destruction threatens homes and businesses in places like Santa Monica, a hub of the region’s thriving venture capital scene.

### Insurance Industry Under Pressure
The financial fallout from the fires may also deliver a fatal blow to California’s crumbling **insurance industry**. Many leading providers like **State Farm** and **Costco** have already restricted or eliminated coverage in the state, and now home premiums that are already eye-watering will climb even higher. Sadly, many of those who lost their homes in the fires had **no coverage at all**.

### A Call for Innovation
Is there a better way? Can we draw on technology and innovation to design a **cheaper, more inclusive insurance regime**? Based on the billions of dollars that VCs have poured into so-called **“insurtech”**, one would certainly think so.

A recent report by CNBC featured no less than **150 insurance startups** looking to disrupt the industry. Most of these are focused on ancillary services like claim management and fraud prevention, but a good number are in the business of selling home insurance policies. Given this flourishing of startups with cutting edge analytic tools, it’s perhaps surprising that **insurance options** for many Americans are more scarce and costly than ever.

### Overstated Potential
One reason for this is that, like so many other venture-backed fields, the value and potential of **insurtech** got vastly overstated in the go-go days of 2021. The hangover has been brutal. A **TechCrunch survey** from mid-2023 uses words like “death” and “disillusionment” while describing the truly horrid returns the sector has delivered for investors.

### The Challenge Ahead
The bigger problem, of course, is that the home insurance market is simply too vast and capital intensive for startups to make much of an impact. There are the familiar insurance brands like **Progressive** and **Farmer’s**, whose deep pockets are backstopped by reinsurance firms with even deeper pockets. The reinsurance firms are in turn backstopped by so-called **retrocession firms**, with the state and federal government sometimes stepping in as a very last resort. It’s a very different ballgame than the one most startups play in, no matter how cutting edge their tech is.

### Political Implications
The problem of how to provide **affordable home insurance** is harder still since it involves prickly political questions. These include deciding whether those who build homes in disaster-prone areas should be entitled to coverage in the first place, and how to build public infrastructure to ensure **fire hydrants don’t run dry** as they did in Los Angeles this week.

Finding the response to these questions will require a civil, evidence-based national conversation—one that feels far-off in light of the ugly finger-pointing already underway between President Trump and California lawmakers. Perhaps that conversation will come in time. For now, spare a thought for the millions of Americans still facing the fire threat and the brave firefighters working to contain it.

If you wish to help, here are some resources courtesy of **Fortune**’s Andrew Nusca: If you’re keen to lend support: The [LAFD Foundation](https://supportlafd.kindful.com/?campaign=1040812&fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAaYCsJMFXSed_-UIi4B8i6-ABSydTzEOjibVqhNddz4ZKdoLY8KHdcwoHWs_aem_8oboJVng-WKfmV-BZBpn3A) equips and supplies firefighters. The [California Fire Foundation](https://www.cafirefoundation.org/what-we-do/for-communities/disaster-relief) supports firefighters and affected residents. The [Cal Fire Benevolent Association](https://calfire.foundation/donations/) supports firefighters and their families. [LA County’s Department of Animal Care and Control](https://animalcare.lacounty.gov/emergency-response/) shelters displaced animals. GoFundMe has aggregated [fundraisers related to LA’s wildfires](https://www.gofundme.com/c/act/wildfire-relief/california) as well as created [its own relief fund](https://www.gofundme.com/f/wildfire-relief-fund-2025). And the [American Red Cross](https://www.redcross.org/local/california/los-angeles.html) is on the scene, as always.

The once hot insuretech sector fell out of favor a few years ago. Given the scope of the current disaster though, it's not clear what role the VC-backed startups could have played.

Can Startups Revolutionize Home Insurance Amid California's Fire Crisis?

## OX Delivers: A Game Changer in the Trucking Sector

U.K.-based startup **OX Delivers** is revolutionizing the trucking industry in southern Africa with its **flat-pack designs** and **subscription models** for electric trucks. This innovative approach aims to provide **entrepreneurs** with **end-to-end infrastructure**, allowing them to utilize trucks as needed.

### What Makes OX Delivers Unique?

The **flat-pack design** means that trucks are shipped in parts and can be assembled easily on-site, making shipping more affordable. The trucks are built to withstand tough conditions, perfect for transporting goods across challenging terrains.

These trucks come equipped with a **74-kilowatt-hour battery**, offering a range of over **90 miles** and capable of carrying up to **4,400 pounds** of cargo. The **electric design** not only reduces maintenance and fuel costs but also eliminates noise pollution and tailpipe emissions, enabling businesses in southern Africa to grow sustainably.

### Expansion Plans and Economic Impact

Founded in 2013, OX Delivers has recently gained significant traction, securing a **$163 million multiyear deal** to establish a new franchise, **OX East Africa**, which will operate in **Rwanda** and expand into **Uganda, Tanzania,** and **Kenya**.

Co-founder and CEO **Simon Davis** stated that this agreement represents a significant milestone and reflects the company's momentum in the electric truck market. OX Delivers aims to set up more franchises to **supercharge trade across the Global South**.

### A Greener Future for Transportation

The rise of OX Delivers signals a promising future not just for southern African nations but for global sustainability efforts. By providing accessible **electric vehicles**, the company is helping to establish a greener infrastructure. Unlike the U.S., where reliance on gas-powered vehicles is deeply entrenched, African markets are more adaptable and ready to embrace **electric vehicles** for a cleaner economy.

### Community Feedback

The community's response has been overwhelmingly positive, with comments highlighting the **high utility**, **low cost**, and **efficient design** of OX trucks. Many envision a future where these electric vehicles are commonplace across Africa.

For further insights and updates, join our **free newsletter** for good news and practical tips on promoting sustainability.

Unlocking Growth: How Arkansas is Empowering Startups Across All Counties

Summary:

Arkansas Takes Bold Steps to Support Startups

Why This Matters

What’s Being Done

The Vision for the Future

Comments

Subscribe our newsletter to receive our daily digested news

ListMyStartup.app

Other Latest News

Snappy Expands Its Empire: The Game-Changing Acquisition of Covver

Why Proprietary Data is the Key to Success for AI Startups in 2024

Unveiling January's Startup Buzz: Near-Pentacorns and Major Funding Highlights

Revolutionizing Renewable Energy Funding: How Plural Energy is Tokenizing Green Assets for All

The Controversial Techno-Colonial Dream: Why A Startup Wants to Buy Greenland

Can Startups Revolutionize Home Insurance Amid California's Fire Crisis?

This Innovative Startup is Transforming the Trucking Industry with Subscription Electric Vehicles in Africa

Other Latest News

Snappy Expands Its Empire: The Game-Changing Acquisition of Covver

Why Proprietary Data is the Key to Success for AI Startups in 2024

Unveiling January's Startup Buzz: Near-Pentacorns and Major Funding Highlights

Revolutionizing Renewable Energy Funding: How Plural Energy is Tokenizing Green Assets for All

The Controversial Techno-Colonial Dream: Why A Startup Wants to Buy Greenland

Can Startups Revolutionize Home Insurance Amid California's Fire Crisis?

This Innovative Startup is Transforming the Trucking Industry with Subscription Electric Vehicles in Africa